Tour of coal plant in Brilliant opens eyes

BRILLIANT -- A bus trip to tour the Cardinal Station Unit 3 Power Plant introduced visitors to the latest technology in the U.S. to monitor and reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the coal burning process at the facility.

The plant's retrofitting was in response to increasingly stringent regulations imposed on the coal industry by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Forty-two employees, retirees and their families were guests of Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative of New Concord, one of 25 electric distribution cooperatives in Ohio (one of the 25 is actually in Michigan) and joint owners of Buckeye Power Inc. the generation and transmission cooperative which launched the $350 million project of the aging plant in 2008. Unit 3 originally began operation in 1977.

Tour guide to Cardinal Station was Brian Bennett, member services manager at GMEC and a 23-year veteran of the bus trip circuit.

"GMEC members are the owners of the cooperative, we want to show them what they own," said Bennett.

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Buckeye Power is owner of two of the three coal plant units at the Station. The massive facility, situated on 300 acres along the shoreline of the Ohio River, just south of Brilliant, has 310 employees.

American Electric Power owns Unit 1, Buckeye Power owns Units 2 and 3, but AEP operates the entire facility for its owners. The unique partnership represents the first-ever alliance of AEP, an investor-owned electric utility and Buckeye Power, a member-owned electric utility, to construct and operate a power station to serve the consumers of both entities.

Jim Palmisano, chief accountant, and Kevin Zemanek, operations engineer, were part of a contingent of Buckeye Power employees who led groups of visitors on the 90-minute tour of Unit 3, explaining the basic function of the equipment at each step of the coal-burning process.

The new technology and

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See COAL page D-3

features at Cardinal Station:

The electrostatic precipitators remove approximately 99 percent of all fly ash particles produced by coal combustion. Ash can be marketed for use in land reclamation, concrete, space-age plastics, ceramics and paint.

Catalytic reduction system (much like the catalytic converter in your car) reduces nitrogen oxide gas by up to 90 percent.

Flue gas desulfurization (scrubbers) removes 99.8 percent of sulfur dioxide produced in the generation process. This will allow the plant to continue to burn Central Appalachian coal, which until now has been extricated almost exclusively from West Virginia mines. Ohio coal is higher in sulfur, West Virginia coal has a much lower sulfur content making it more desirable.

Unit 3, the retrofitted hyperbolic-shaped cooling tower is 423 feet high with an overall diameter of 384 feet. The Unit 3 water cooling system is a "closed loop system" which means the water is recycled.

The exhaust gases from the combustion process travel through a series of state-of-the-art environmental control systems to the cooling tower where the gases will be discharged through the tower rather than through a separate stack. The white "smoke" emitting from the cooling tower is not smoke at all. It is just water vapor plume -- steam.

This technology has been widely used in Europe for more than 20 years. The Cardinal Station Unit 3 is the first installation of this "new" technology in the United States, to reduce emissions and increase output.

The process for generating, transmitting and distributing electricity begins when the coal arrives at the plant by truck, rail or barge. The total plant, which encompasses all three units, burns approximately 4.2 million tons of coal annually, of this total, Buckeye Power uses about 2.8 million tons. The plant's immediate proximity to the Ohio River provides the cheapest mode of transportation for coal -- the river barge.

A brief description about how coal generates electricity.

From the barge, truck or train, conveyor belts carry the coal to the plant where pulverizers grind the coal into a fine, talcum powder-like consistency. The powdered coal is injected into the steam generators where it burns at high temperatures, turning water that circulates into steam.

The steam is directed into the turbines, where it turns the blades, like wind turning a windmill. The turbine drives a generator, which has the equivalent of 900,000 horsepower, which produces electricity. Exhaust steam from the turbine is condensed and returned to the generator to re-start the process.

For many coal plants in Ohio, the cost of the retrofitting process is prohibitive, which according to industry analysts, could result in the closing of many and the loss of jobs for thousands of people.

Quote: "A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday overturned a key Obama administration rule to reduce harmful emissions from coal-burning power plants, sparking a rally in coal company shares and relief among utility firms.

"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in a 2-1 decision that the Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its mandate with the rule, which was to limit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants in 28 mostly Eastern states and Texas."